


Nightmares

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Anger, Claiming, Intimacy, Jealousy, M/M, Nightmares, Nostalgia, Reconciliation, Rough Sex, Softness, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:15:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4794047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Such a fragile, useless little machine this body is,” Gabriel continues, hand still tight against Michael’s wrist, fingers pressing to his skittering pulse. “Frail and pathetic. Prone to illness and death, as Alex is. Do you not remember, brother, your majesty? Six wings and a wheel of eyes and fire. That was you, Michael, once. That was </i>us<i>, Michael.” Gabriel shifts close enough that Michael whimpers, the angle of their bodies turning the bones in his wrist painfully tight. “Once.”</i></p><p>What worse nightmare would there be, for either brother, than to be rejected by the other?</p><p>Gabriel drops the amphora, and the darkness is not merely black, but brings up the most frightening nightmares of anyone who is touched by it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kinneykid3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinneykid3/gifts).



> Written after the last ep, because it was incredible and we have too many feels.
> 
> Unbeta'd, we wrote this in a whirlwind.

He only knows he’s slept when he is woken, and that alone is troubling. The fact that it is darkness, pure and stifling, when it should be day, frightens Michael more. It feels like the silence before the storm from which he was born, oppressive and frightening, and his heart seeks, immediately, for his brother.

“Gabriel?”

There is no echo to his voice, there is no sound at all, and yet even that is loud, too loud, for him. Michael sits, curling his legs beneath himself, and he presses his hands against his ears. There are screams, but there are none, there are howls but there are none. It is everything and nothing. It is too much.

He can’t breathe.

For a brief moment, he wonders if that’s not for the best.

“Brother.”

Michael doesn’t drop his hands, but he lifts his eyes at the word. Blinking into the blackness, shadows shift, or so it seems. He would know that voice if he were deaf, comatose, deceased; his brother cuts through all and directly to his core, a vibration that warms beneath his skin despite the chill.

“Gabriel,” Michael whispers. He feels his voice leave his lips but does not hear it, and uncoils from the sofa where he slept. The ground is there beneath his feet, but all around him the void. “You escaped.”

A laugh then, that purring, sweet thing that is enough to arch Michael’s back, uncoil him from sleep. But it sounds perverted, here, warped to something sick and almost desperate. Something cruel that Michael has not heard for a long time. He draws a breath and tastes only dark.

“Escaped,” Gabriel repeats. “Oh I escaped, Michael. From Julian and New Delphi, and aeons-old preconceptions of love. And family. And honor.”

There is movement, Michael can feel it, and a whisper of wings, and then Gabriel is near, Michael can feel his breath, can feel the feathers of his wings brush close against his cheek. He reaches out and Gabriel catches his wrist in a painful grip. Slowly, he turns it.

“I did promise to find you again, little brother. You know I always do.”

Despite the pain, Michael’s breath leaves him with a little sound, a helpless thing weaker than any other in the universe would ever hear him make. He tries to turn his wrist and bring their hands together, and cries out as fingers dig between the slender bones of his wrist and hold him in place.

“Gabriel,” he whispers. “I didn’t want to leave you, you know that -”

“I know that you did anyway,” answers his brother. Gabriel’s tone wraps like thorny vines between his ribs, cinching them too tight for him to breathe. The darkness is inside him, filling nose and mouth with every unstable breath he takes. Michael turns quickly and feels his elbow grind bone-to-bone. An inch more and it will break. A breath more and he will fall to his knees. His wings begin to lift from beneath his skin but Gabriel’s hand presses softly between his shoulders, and Michael leaves his wings flat.

“I knew,” Michael laughs, as if by doing so his voice might flood the room with light and illuminate his brother’s form behind him. But his voice isn’t Gabriel’s voice, his words not that of their Father. He swallows hard enough that his throat clicks. “I knew you would best him, brother, I knew you would find your way to us again.”

“Us?” Gabriel’s laugh mingles with Michael’s, contorting the sound, echoing it and burning Michael’s lips where it had settled. “It always has been, hasn’t it, Michael? You and your _true brother_. Your precious _Alex_.”

“Gabriel -”

“Such a fragile, useless little machine this body is,” Gabriel continues, hand still tight against Michael’s wrist, fingers pressing to his skittering pulse. “Frail and pathetic. Prone to illness and death, as Alex is. Do you not remember, brother, your majesty? Six wings and a wheel of eyes and fire. That was you, Michael, once. That was _us_ , Michael.” Gabriel shifts close enough that Michael whimpers, the angle of their bodies turning the bones in his wrist painfully tight. “Once.”

The upward snap of his hand is enough to bring Michael to his knees, driving into ground he cannot see but can feel in a rivet of pain up the length of his body. It’s enough that for a moment, Michael knows he is awake. The press of fingers, once-gentle fingers, against his wrist is enough that Michael hopes he is still asleep.

“Still,” he whispers, an urgency in his voice that sounds as young and fearful as any human child, rather than a being of unfathomable power. “We are still, Gabriel, you told me to go,” Michael says, brow creasing as another winter-wind laugh sounds from behind him.

“And so you did.”

“When you closed the door and locked it to remain in New Delphi,” Michael reminds him. He lifts his head and for a moment sees not Gabriel, not the darkness, but simmering embers, wide as wings, alighting and fading into ash in the dark. “He is to me as David was to you, we spoke of this and you bade me go to him!”

“My David!” Gabriel’s voice rings heavy through the pulsing dark, a moment of shifting, like a breath, and it settles again, most oppressive than before. “My David, my sweet innocent boy. My _son_ , whom you let perish.”

“Gabriel -”

“You did not wait long for him to outlive his usefulness, did you brother?”

“I could not catch him in time, Gabriel, please -”

“You could not _catch him_ Michael? A little boy falling from the walls of a city you knew like the back of your hand.” A jerk and Michael arches back, fingers wide, eyes closed and heart hammering as he bares his chest to his brother, as he bares his stomach, his soul, his entire will. Vulnerable and trembling.

They spoke of this. They spoke at length of memories centuries old of which they still bear scars - Michael in his regret, Gabriel in his grief. Bound to chairs across from the other, with lightning snapping overhead, Gabriel laid his hand over Michael’s when a crackle made him flinch with memories of storms and they understood, then. They understood.

Michael stretches his body, unmoving, and then his mind in turn. He brings to his forethoughts the time in their eyrie together, newly made, when the world itself was still young. Their words then were unnecessary, their conversations taking place unspoken in the sanctuary of their shared minds and curious bodies. Michael clutches blind for Gabriel’s recollection of their wholeness then and finds nothing.

Darkness, consuming and barren.

Gabriel shoves him forward and Michael gasps as he collides to the floor, blood spilling hot from his nose and toes curling at the agony of his wrist shoved between his shoulders. He fans his wings free and a booted foot crushes one to the ground to hold him in place.

“Were I meant to have caught him, I would,” Michael whispers, rushed, his thudding heart beating a deafening clamor in his ears. “Had Father meant for that boy to be king, I would have been fast enough then!”

“You would blame _Father_?” Gabriel’s voice is a roar, though he hardly raises it. “You would blame our _Father_ for your petty cruelties, Michael? You envied him, that I no longer returned to Heaven to see you when I had my son. You envied him and you hated him. And you watched him die.”

He grinds the toe of his boot against sensitive feathers and Michael’s voice shakes from him, shuddering the darkness around them. They tear free with gentle pops, shredded from his skin, the blood slicking those that follow beneath Gabriel’s foot.

Michael’s whisper is lost against the floor, swallowed into pitch, but his voice raises in a cry as Gabriel drives his heel into Michael’s wing instead and strains the bones within.

“He told me,” Michael cries out, as loud as he can and only then just enough to be heard. A weak sound quakes from him. “He told me that is how it must be. Your David was not meant for the throne, the other -”

He draws a breath and chokes, the darkness caught like velvet in his throat.

“It was for the other David,” whispers Michael. “Our Father told me - he said - _commanded_ me, Gabriel, that it was His plan and I was not to stop him and I could not defy Him.”

“You have defied, Michael, you have disobeyed,” Gabriel whispers to him, shifting his foot and falling heavy to kneel over his brother instead. “You were the one to forsake Father’s word, when you killed Lyrae, when you saw blood upon your hands as though for the first time, you _disobeyed._ ”

“I told him to be brave,” Michael whispers. “Your boy, I told him to be brave as he fell.”

Gabriel is silent, the darkness pulsing around them with their heartbeats, out of time and dissonant. They do not match. It hurts Michael more than he can comprehend.

“I told him you were so proud.”

“How dare you,” Gabriel seethes. “How dare you fly so near and dangle hope before him.”

“He was so brave, Gabriel.”

A hitch in Gabriel’s breath is all Michael needs to move. His free wing collides hard with his brother as he shoves himself upward, pulling his held wrist free with a stab of pain. Gabriel falls to the floor but a rustle of movement sends Michael to his feet. No sooner does he snap his wings wide and step back than his brother’s body collides with him, a battering ram that pins Michael to the wall he did not know was there.

He lifts his arm but it’s the wrong side, and the blade cuts singing through the air from the other and presses a thin line of wet heat from his throat, jutted beneath Michael’s chin. Gabriel’s fist pulls his hair to bare his neck further and Michael leaves his hands upraised. He dare not shake his head, instead lifting his eyes as if to seek in the firmament for help that will never come.

“What then, brother, had I defied Him?” Michael snarls, a rush of breath that stirs eddies through the consuming darkness. “Sent to the Inferno with our eldest? Smote from Heaven into the outer circles, or lower still? He’d have stripped me of my nature, Gabriel, and David would have died all the same because that is what He wished.”

The blade cuts deeper, useless thin skin parting beneath, and Michael closes his eyes.

He reaches and finds no light in which to bare his thoughts.

“I would no longer be your brother,” Michael whispers, but he speaks to himself, alone in a waking nightmare with a force of anger he cannot best. “Nothing has ever mattered more.”

The blade does not go deeper, it lingers against Michael’s pulse and then, slowly, it slips lower, still pressing but no longer cutting skin, just collecting blood against it to drip to Michael’s shoulder.

“You lie,” Gabriel whispers, voice echoing in the void once more, pressing cool against Michael’s injured form. “He would never have -”

Michael laughs, and ichor spreads like ink from his lips. A drop of blood against his brother’s blade echoes ringing.

“Lesser angels have been destroyed in vast numbers for defying him, melted away like snow beneath the sun. His first was stripped bare and sent into an eternity of overseeing suffering, brother, do you remember?” Michael swallows hard and lifts a hand, teeth bared as it’s pinned to the wall.

“What do you think He’d have done had His sword turned against him? Had His right hand struck out and attempted to upturn His plan?” Michael asks. “You loved David and at any lesser cost I would have caught him, but I love you more, Gabriel. More than my own life. And only by your hand will I be cast down.”

He stretches, an uneasy shift that does nothing to stop the quaking of his body, the trembling in his muscles.

“So cast me down, then,” breathes Michael. “You have already severed us and I am not whole without you.”

Breath, then, warmer, against his face, lower, against his neck. There is a hum, as though from a working engine, as though from bees. Like in the Garden, aeons ago. Beneath the apple tree where Michael had touched the fruit, almost picked it, before Gabriel had pulled him away.

_That’s not for you, brother, leave it be._

He wonders if Gabriel will ever touch him so softly again. He wonders if he will ever hear him again.

“You told me once, you would give me your wings, should I lose my own,” Michael whispers. “You told me you would, should I lose them to the storm that made us, do you remember?”

Michael feels Gabriel shake his head, he feels his breath hitch, he feels the caress of his wings against his own. Gabriel makes a sound, and the blade slips away, though his weight does not.

“I can’t,” Gabriel whispers. “I ache, knowing I would, knowing I will, but I don’t know why I can’t feel you here.”

Michael does not dare lift his other hand, unseen and unseeing, halved from the other by cloying darkness. He imagines it instead, palm pressed to scruffy cheek, fingers laced through sleek strands to press them back from Gabriel’s eyes. No shudder of breath comes, no movement towards him.

When they do not speak, there is only silence between them. A howling void gapes in the pit of Michael’s stomach and into which he would release himself, half-formed and sundered, if it meant that he did not have to exist without his brother’s presence inside him.

“Do you remember,” Michael asks, “swimming in the Nile? How we waited until the merchant ships had docked at night, and with crocodiles watching us from the shore, we swung our wings into the water and bathed in moonlight?”

Gabriel makes a pained sound, and Michael chokes down an echo of it.

“We found an artisan after, when we were in our plainclothes, carving our likenesses. Winged figures facing each other, a lotus between us,” he says, and his smile strikes and falters. “Twins, mirror images of the other.”

Gabriel’s breathing hitches again. There is a hollow sound as metal hits the ground and both hands settle to Michael’s shoulders instead.

“I remember storms,” Gabriel sighs. “So many storms, and you were always so scared.”

“You were always there to make sure I wouldn’t be,” Michael replies. He doesn’t open his eyes, he doesn’t dare to. The void fills him entirely and pulls his heart aching in its slow beat, with no answering call.

“Yes.” Gabriel’s thumb moves soft against Michael’s thin shirt, warming through it, enough to feel. “They are but dreams, Michael. Soft and sweet things. I will wake soon, I know I will.”

“I, too, I hope,” Michael says. He brings his hands up slowly and seeks blind across Gabriel’s face, cupping his cheeks to draw them together. Perhaps if skin presses to skin, if their hearts echo in the other’s ribs, then their minds will sync again. Static fills the air and silence fills the spaces between them.

Michael pulls him closer still, sinking his arms around his brother’s neck.

“Where will we wake when this nightmare has passed?” Michael asks him. “In darkness still, but of our own making, wrapped in the hollow of our wings. I want to be in the eyrie again, I want to bury myself beneath a bed of pillows and -”

His breath catches, shadow filling his throat.

“And I want your arms around me, brother, when we realize this has all been a terrible dream.”

Gabriel groans, a soft and shuddering thing, and turns his head against his brother. The brother he would have given his life for, his wings for, his soul and very being. The brother he had held and cuddled, laughed with and kissed. The brother who had worn ridiculous clothing and pretended to hide behind his wings when he had had too much to drink. The brother who had reached for him, sobbing and bloody at Babylon, and asked him for forgiveness. The brother who had asked Gabriel to smite him for his cruelties.

The brother who had left him behind. Who had betrayed him. Hurt him. Abandoned him.

“You left me.”

“No,” Michael muffles his words against Gabriel’s skin.

“You left me there to suffer so you could go to Alex,”

“You pushed me through the door,” Michael reminds him. “You closed it against me, you would not let me in. I called. I called Gabriel, until there was no more time and only then I went. Because the door would not yield to me.”

“He broke me,” Gabriel says quietly, and his voice cracks on a sob as he presses his fists against the wall and himself against his brother. “He broke me by taking you from me.”

“No,” Michael whispers, his words a silver flourish in the dark. “Never.”

He grasps Gabriel to him, blood seeping from his neck and thickening between them. His bones ache, his body hurts, but it pales in compare to the pain that fills the emptiness of his thoughts and splits his ribs wide to hear his brother’s suffering. Back against the wall, Michael holds Gabriel fast and slides to sit, bringing his brother to his knees, cradling him in arms and between his legs.

“He cannot take me from you,” Michael murmurs, tucking his head against Gabriel’s shoulder, warming the chill from his skin with soft breaths against his throat. “No one can. Our Father Himself could not separate us and neither will Lyrae. Neither will this war. Neither will this nightmare come between us.”

It is a prayer, beseeching. It is hope.

It is all they have now to drive back the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

Gabriel rests against Michael until he feels he can breathe again, he rests against him until Michael’s form trembles and he makes a sound, weak and little, and ducks his head against his chest. Warmth, there, salty tears mingling with tacky blood, and Gabriel feels his own soul respond to it, his own tears fall, streaking his face with black and pulling the air from his lungs.

It is a nightmare, the most terrifying one of all, having his brother abandon him, betray him, forget him. He knows only that Julian tried. That he poisoned him with darkness, that he spoke cruelties into his ear. He knows only that Julian is laid down and gone, a broken vessel for a broken spirit. He knows only that if this is but a dream, he will have it end well, if he is to wake once more tethered and tormented in a room where Noma’s wings still drip ichor against the ground.

And then his heart finds its companion. A weak beat but one to match, and slowly, so slowly, their breathing evens too.

Michael hears his brother’s voice without the movement of breath against him. A soft sound, a voice in the wilderness, and Michael is there to hear it. The only one, but neither have ever needed any other. He blinks as the cloud around them clears enough to see Gabriel, to lift his chin and attempt to make sense of what happened.

Ink-black tears streak his brother’s cheeks, and Michael smears them away with his thumbs. He wipes until the punishing stains are gone, he wipes until Gabriel makes a soft sound of protest. Their eyes meet, and Michael’s fearful smile says enough before it fades.

_There you are_.

“You’re bleeding,” Gabriel whispers, and Michael’s laugh sparks like a firefly as he drags his hand across his mouth.

“You broke my nose.”

Gabriel blinks, lashes barely touching before he makes another sound and reaches for Michael, drawing his knuckles against his cheek, up to his temple and into his hair. Michael trembles, eyes half-open and physical body aching. He winces when Gabriel moves, and a glance down through the hazy smog of darkness reveals the damaged side of a wing, torn feathers, smeared blood.

He did that too, he knows.

He remembers the feeling of feathers giving way beneath his boot.

He remembers how hard it was to breathe, and know, still, that there was nothing he could do to start up again. Not until his lungs filled and emptied as Michael’s did. He reaches, careful, to his own wings, flexes them, stretches them wide, and curls them close again, around them.

“Stay still,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to Michael’s, allowing his hands to come up to hold onto his shirt, to stroke his neck, learning, relearning him again.

He thinks of their essence, of everything they are. He thinks of how they were made, how one without the other is not possible, how a severance, even so short-lived as this, is almost impossible to maintain. He thinks, and he breathes, and he conjures between them the image of their true form, the winged wheels joined, the eyes, all-seeing. 

He conjures and he holds, and he feels his wings singe, he can feel the popping against the tips, the acrid smell from it. He hushes Michael as he makes a sound, in pain, from Gabriel’s suffering, and sets his dusted feathers against his brother’s wounds, to start their healing.

Michael doesn’t fuss again, eyes barely open if only to let linger what light lives briefly between them. Ashy wings stroke against his own and he shivers, tightening his legs to bring Gabriel near enough that he can hook his heels around Gabriel’s back where he sits. Michael lifts his wrist to set beneath the pale grey stroke of feathers. He rubs his hand along his nose to dry the blood and stop the bleed.

Caked in blood and ash and earth, Michael leans forward enough to feel Gabriel’s wings nearly close around them. It is a sanctuary at the end of the world, lit only by will-o-wisp flickers of breath between.

“I’m sorry,” Michael whispers. “I’m sorry that you thought I left. I’m sorry that you were alone. I’m sorry -” He tilts his head, this a pain that cannot be healed through burnt feathers or holy flame. “I’m sorry I didn’t catch him.”

“Hush,” Gabriel whispers, wincing himself as he reaches to pluck a feather, dusting it in his hands, to bring it to Michael’s nose, to his throat, to wipe away the pain he caused there too.

His David will always linger with him, that little human soul, a beautiful chosen boy, always his to keep safe within. But this boy, equally as beautiful, just as damned, will never leave him. Gabriel ducks his head to softly kiss against parted dry lips, enough to pull a sound from Michael, enough to ease him against the wall once more.

“You cared,” he sighs. “The last thing he saw was a kind face.”

It will always sting. It will always hurt.

It is a horror between them as countless others, but it will not break them.

Michael shakes his head, this secret so long held within that to open it now is akin to splitting apart thick scar tissue. Gabriel sets a hand to Michael’s cheek to stop the movement.

“Michael.”

“It isn’t enough,” Michael tells him, glassy-gaze wide as he seeks into the depths of his brother’s gaze. “It isn’t -”

A kiss then quiets him, but for the little noise he makes against his brother’s mouth. Lips parting unsteadily, they join again in unison and each spreads a hand through the other’s hair. In tandem they taste destruction from the other’s tongue, in tandem they breathe forgiveness to the other’s cheek. They slide to their knees but only one sound whispers through the dark, sliding right leg, left leg, settling and pressing palms to the other’s cheeks. Between them the wheels join and begin to turn again, a flame sparking bright between their mouths that meet in synchronicity.

Their wounds are raw but their hearts beat still.

_I missed you._

_I need you._

_I have you._

_Stay_.

Gabriel sits against his heels and feels Michael kneel a little higher to reach over him, nuzzling when they do not kiss, smearing ash and tears and blood between them.

Now, the howls imagined before become startlingly real. Beyond the windows of the apartment, behind the door. Horrors seen only by those crying over them. Each human, each eight-ball, each angel filled with their own worst dread.

Gabriel closes his eyes and turns into the soft touches, feeling his guilt burn within him, sear his skin, boil in his blood. He did this. Fighting his own nightmare he unleashed unspeakable evil on the city his brother loves, just to watch it suffer with him.

“Forgive me,” Gabriel breathes. “Forgive me this.”

Michael shakes his head, not in cruelty but in futility. He touches a kiss to his brother’s cheek, another against his hairline, soft strands draping across his nose. He kisses his brow and wraps his arms beneath Gabriel’s own, making himself small against his big brother.

“You have suffered for this. I have. We both will again, I think,” Michael murmurs. “I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know that it can be fixed until the amphora empties and then -”

Desolation.

Ruin.

Death, swollen and stinking in the streets.

At least they will suffer with those condemned. Every other time they - not they, Michael has - unleashed this hell upon a populace he watched at distance and with pride that damns him now. Every other time Gabriel has tried to stop him. Every other time Michael has ignored his admonishments.

It is only fitting that they are punished, too, whenever their hard-won light begins to fade.

Michael draws a breath, sharp enough that his brother’s arms hold tighter around him.

“No,” Gabriel tells him. “Michael -”

“If we could find him -”

“No.”

“Bring him here, ally ourselves -”

Gabriel tries to draw back but Michael holds him fast, pressing his brow to Gabriel’s temple.

“What does that war matter now,” Michael whispers softly, “when our Father is gone from us?”

“Do you not remember,” Gabriel asks him, tone hissing. “Do you not remember just before he was cast down? Before _you_ cast him down?”

“I never had quarrel with him.”

“You were favored,” Gabriel tells him. “You, of all his siblings, he loved the most.”

He remembers the order, he remembers the way it had tasted like blood on his lips when he told it to his brother. He remembers the anger, the clawing hands, the screaming wrath rained upon him. He remembers holding Michael until he had pulled free, righteousness burning his eyes gold as they had never been before.

“It was why He made you cast him out.”

Michael’s breath leaves him all at once and he sinks back to sit on his heels. A protest is born and dies on his lips and he lets his eyes slip closed when Gabriel strokes a hand through his hair. How many betrayals, in aeons of existence, are yet to be bared between them? How many secrets kept hidden for the other’s sake?”

“Our Father wanted you to know on whose side you were,” Gabriel tells him, gently, so gently that it wounds Michael all the more. “He wanted to know for Himself that you would heed Him. All of us saw your love of our eldest brother, all of us could see that had he but asked, you would have gone to him.”

“Yes,” Michael whispers. “Because it wasn’t fair.”

“I know.”

“It wasn’t fair to treat him - to treat us - that way, it isn’t fair now and it wasn’t -” Michael swallows, a weak sound struggling in his throat. “I didn’t cast him out. When he saw me come for him he knew, and he left. He chose to leave.”

Gabriel strokes his hair again, gentling Michael from his anger, from his upset, from a memory that haunts him endlessly.

“He would not come,” Gabriel tells him. “He would not come, now, were we to call him. Not to Vega, not to our side. He owes us nothing but vengeance. We both knew him to be a man of his word, he will not let us forget that.”

Michael makes a sound, and Gabriel cradles him close again. He can feel the cool tendrils of the darkness around them, trying to slip beneath his skin, trying to coil against his heart. It had lived within him long enough that Gabriel knows its taste, knows its weight against him. It will not enter him again, as no other angel would, as no possession could. He has grown immune. He will protect his brother until he, too, becomes the same.

“What could he do?” He asks finally, a sigh moving Michael’s hair softly against his temple. “Against this, he is as powerless as we.”

Michael leans into Gabriel’s embrace and tilts his head against his brother’s mouth. A kiss pushes against his temple. Another just beneath his eye as he turns.

“They called him Lightbringer,” Michael murmurs against Gabriel’s mouth, bearing him back with a kiss. Gabriel’s wings keep the darkness at bay and Michael sheathes his own, sliding long legs over Gabriel’s hips to sit astride him, sheltered and safe. “He challenged our Father’s power with his own, big brother, but we know not how other than it made Him afraid and angry enough to send His own child to the pit.”

“Why court such fury?” Gabriel laughs, mirthless. “Why risk it, when his rage now would be directed as much at us for not siding with him in the war?”

“He could be the one to dispel the darkness,” Michael insists, curling his fingers against Gabriel’s chest. “What if that was what upset Father? If Lucifer could render His greatest gifts impotent...”

Gabriel holds his breath at the mention of the name. They have not spoken it, not in more than whispered tones, in messages passed along, not since the Fall. And Michael says it without care, without fear. It sends a shiver down Gabriel’s spine that arches him, that pushes his chest against Michael’s warm kiss, that has his hands winding beneath him to hold him close.

In truth, he could hardly deny Michael anything. But this… this stirs panic within him that Gabriel cannot stifle. There was never outright cruelty from their brother, never anything that their Father saw, but he had always had an interest in Michael that Gabriel did not like.

Something. Just something he could not place.

He strokes his hands through dark hair instead, seeking against Michael’s back where his wings would usually arch, where his shoulder blades now tremble.

Michael doesn’t speak of it again, discerning some small victory in Gabriel’s lack of protest. Instead he sets his lips beneath Gabriel’s jaw, against this body’s pulse. He sucks until it quickens and blood rises livid to pale skin. There is life in them yet, and where there is life, there is fight. They will not yield to this darkness, and what light they have sparked as static between them they will savor for as long as it lasts.

A sharp rock of Michael’s body pushes a moan from his brother’s lips. He chases the sound with a kiss that traps the next sweet sound between them. Knees spreading wider across the floor of Michael’s eyrie, he juts his hips down against Gabriel and presses him to the carpet. Michael gasps breathless when Gabriel’s fingers curl against his back, pressing through his shirt and indenting skin.

“Show me,” Michael sighs, he begs, he has to see and to touch and to know that the damage wrought between them is impermanent and fleeting. “Show me your strength, brother. Let me feel you.”

A susurrus akin to a river’s whisper, to shifting desert sands, to the wind in the Tree of Knowledge spills a vicious shiver down Michael’s spine. He lifts his eyes and watches as a smaller set of wings unravel from Gabriel’s shoulders. He need not look to feel the presence of the third set, and when they embrace him tightly - pressing Michael firm against Gabriel’s body - Michael moans his joy.

“Never again,” Gabriel sighs. “Never again will I let us be separated so. To not feel your heart beat with mine, to not hear your breath with mine… there is no harsher cruelty. No worse nightmare than that.”

He kisses Michael before he can reply, allowing himself to take his brother in again, to taste his lips and feel his heart and body hum against his own. He holds harsher, tugs Michael close and draws his knees up around him to hold him closer yet. Arching up and swallowing the little sounds Michael gifts him.

“Don’t let me go.”

“Not for Hell,” Gabriel growls against him. “Not even at Father’s word, damned it be.”

Michael laughs, and there is a joy in it that has no place in this world but exists in spite of it. In spite of their shared suffering, in spite of aeons of obedience only to be abandoned. In spite of harm done against others and just as savagely against themselves. Michael delights in his brother’s blasphemy, done for his sake and his sake alone, and he kisses him so firmly that Gabriel moans against his mouth.

“How could I leave you,” Michael whispers, dodging a kiss with a crooked grin. “Never in all eternity could I live without you.”

His grin splits wide with a snort as Gabriel surrounds him in arms and wings alike, holding him too tight to do more than squirm. Michael sighs heat against Gabriel’s throat, he bends within the confines of his embrace to fit a hand between them and make his interests known. Slender fingers follow the fly of Gabriel’s pants and when there is movement within, Michael lets his eyes slip closed in relief and delight, both.

“Take me to bed, brother, or take me here,” Michael murmurs. “Before the darkness blinds us again. Have me at the world’s end as you had me at the beginning.”

Another growl, deep enough to be a sensation, no sound. Like thunder of the storms from which they both were born, like the earth shuddering as it moves. Gabriel turns, rolls them both, and spreads his wings before Michael can lay on them, curling them above them both, a shield and a comfort at once.

Familiar.

As in their eyrie. As on the plains and deserts and marshes of eternity. As in the Garden.

As here, now, in a Vega torn apart by nightmares and open wounds.

“Spread for me,” Gabriel tells him. “Bare yourself and spread for me.”

Michael bites his lower lip and releases it red, glistening with spit and swollen eager. He writhes beneath his brother, an insurmountable force unlike any other in existence, and with long legs shifting works his pants free. Pushing them off with his toes, Michael no sooner frees his ankles than he wraps his thighs against Gabriel’s hips.

“Tell me again,” Michael murmurs, arms curled around Gabriel’s neck and his whispers warm as the sun that has forsaken them.

“Spread,” snarls Gabriel, grinning, and Michael buries his laugh against his brother’s shoulder.

No one else could move Michael so, the voice of their Father in Gabriel but moreso it is Gabriel’s own that stirs Michael to moaning. The messenger, the deliverance, who has for all time spoken His wishes and commanded mankind to move. Michael could no more resist than they, and so parts his thighs wide, knees to the floor but hips raising.

“Bare me,” Gabriel tells him, smiling when Michael makes a sound, wriggling beneath him, and obeys that command too. Beyond, darkness swirls in Vega, swirls in the eyrie around them outside of the wings protectively covering them both. Michael bares him enough to matter, enough to move, and Gabriel kisses him harshly down to the soft carpet once more.

“You are mine, little brother,” he whispers. “I will always find you.”

“Good.”

Gabriel tugs Michael’s bottom lip, turns his head aside with a heavy kiss against his jaw and works one hand between them both to line himself up.

“For you, I would raze heaven,” Gabriel whispers, and kisses Michael before he can protest, before he can do anything but gasp, and pushes in.

Michael trembles, sundered, and with desperate limbs around his twin he holds himself together. His heels dig against Gabriel’s thighs, working up higher to plant his toes against his brother’s hips. A low and aching keen heralds their joining and it is paradise regained, in a world on the edge of destruction.

Gabriel shoves deep, pointed hips pressing to tender thighs, and Michael hopes that he is bruised from it. He will heal, but he hopes for a moment that he does not, that whatever nightmares come from Gabriel’s actions can be displaced by the press of fingers against his inner thighs and the reminder that pain brings. His body shakes as Gabriel shifts out and buries himself again. Michael laughs, and sinks a hand into his brother’s hair to grasp his silky strands and bring their mouths together.

They move as one, lips and groins and hearts all pulsing in a speeding rhythm. Beneath Michael’s back the carpet of his eyrie rubs hot friction against his skin. Inside him, his brother bucks deep enough to push Michael’s breath from him on low, quivering moans. Feathers rustle like leaves around them, six wings splaying wide and snapping low to force their bodies to deeper union. Michael aches for him; he aches because of him. Michael breathes his name like a prayer, beseeching his beloved twin to stay, to please stay, to never go again.

“Never.”

Air and pulse and soul, joined in every way, interlocking wheels that spin faster within the other’s orbit. They are eternal, all-seeing and alight. They are together, as no human could understand. For a moment neither care for the world beyond their embrace; for a moment neither care for anyone but the other, close, here, now, to push aside the nightmares by which both were struck.

“Michael."

A whisper, a worship, and Gabriel kisses him softly. Michael seeks over Gabriel's wings and clutches hard, hands snared against the thick, strong roots of his wings, pulling a moan from Gabriel. Michael levers himself in counterpoint to the rhythm their bodies create, squeezing fingers into feathers and heels into hips. Each thrust against the carpet shudders a moan from him; each kiss traps his fluttering breath in the cage of his ribs.

The world ends not in darkness but in a flash of light. White heat burns behind Michael’s eyes as his body stiffens and bursts, his own cry muffled beneath the waves of the little death that takes him and Gabriel both as the makings of creation itself spill pulse and plasma-bright between them. Michael shakes against his brother, his twin, himself made separate but still wholly the same, and in the void that swallows him again, the first thing Michael hears is Gabriel’s voice. Like a star forming from the aether, a guiding light to follow when he is lost - 

“Little brother,” Gabriel breathes, and Michael is born again. They lay together in rapture, a breathless messy bliss that finds their hands shaking as if they have never used them before, but still lift them to press the other’s hair from their eyes, to seek out the glow of kinship like hearthfire in their hearts. Michael leans up and sinks their mouths together, sweat shining like comets down their cheeks, and he does not let Gabriel loose from the union of their bodies as he turns his brother to his back and lays heavy against him, folded in his wings.

They will not, themselves, be able to keep the darkness at bay. It is a greater force than they and though they have exhausted their efforts to bring a little light into the world, it cannot be maintained. Michael nuzzles against Gabriel’s throat with a gentle noise. He lets himself feel small and safe before he must again become the strength for so many others.

“Perhaps he will bring the light,” Gabriel murmurs. “But it will never come free. And what trade are we willing to give him?”

Michael considers, sighs and shifts and says nothing. Perhaps he will want Vega. Perhaps he will want Alex. He would not be so cruel as to separate the twins again, he was never a monster to Michael.

But all wars demand sacrifices. Nothing ever comes free.

“A deed like this could get him into Father’s favor,” Michael says. “Back into Father’s home.”

“If Father returns,” Gabriel sighs.

“When.”

Michael’s eyes are bright when Gabriel finds them with his own, narrowed in that delightful determination that makes him appear almost feline. Michael’s faith has always been stronger than Gabriel’s. He has not allowed himself to grow jaded as Gabriel has.

“When,” he says, watches Michael’s expression soften in pleasure, in knowing his words soothed and gave strength. Gabriel could love no other more than he does his brother. His other half. And love, with it, brings trust. Brings a fearful drop in the known to allow the other to lead them.

Michael has always been favored. Perhaps in this, too, he will not be wrong.

“He will hear your wings,” Gabriel tells him, shifting a little to sit up, folding back his own, watching the darkness swirl in sickly green and acrid gray beyond the window. “He will come if you call him.”

He does not look back to Michael as he moves around behind him, stands, stretches, hums pleasure at the sensation of their coupling tightening his muscles. He does not turn, but he can hear when he unfolds his wings, one set, another, the third, and sighs as he feels the call wash through him. Without, the city screams, no lights to penetrate the cruelty of the amphora’s nightmarish black. 

But through it, through the thick and cloying fog, Gabriel hears an answering beat of wings.


End file.
